Arlene Schindler > Arlene's Quotes

“A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.”
― Coco Chanel

“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
― H. Jackson Brown Jr.

“But I don't want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
― Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

“Dinner was served on mismatched plates with paper napkins and silverware that looked like it had been stolen from a school cafeteria. The spaghetti was from a box that was still poking out of the garbage pail, the sauce from a jar that was sitting beside the sink. I got the definite impression that he chose to make dinner because he couldn't afford to take me out.”
― Arlene Schindler, The Last Place She'd Look

“Before last night, the most action I had gotten was from a down pillow.”
― Abby Sher, Kissing Snowflakes

“Experience: that most brutal of teachers. But you learn, my God do you learn.”
― C.S. Lewis

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any.”
― Alice Walker

“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.”
― Ernest Hemingway, The Wild Years

“Never regret. If it's good, it's wonderful. If it's bad, it's experience.”
― Victoria Holt

“Blessed are the hearts that can bend; they shall never be broken.”
― Albert Camus

“If you're going through hell, keep going.”
― Winston Churchill

“I could not, at any age, be content to take my place by the fireside and simply look on. Life was meant to be lived.”
― Eleanor Roosevelt

“If you go home with somebody, and they don't have books, don't fuck 'em!”
― John Waters

“Being rich is not about how much money you have or how many homes you own; it's the freedom to buy any book you want without looking at the price and wondering if you can afford it.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money.”
― Virginia Woolf

“Normal is just a cycle on the washing machine.”
― Whoopi Goldberg

“Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.”
― Mark Twain

“As the lights fade to a distant glow, I look back toward the city and imagine, somewhere in all of those lives, a little girl who is a lot like me. Maybe she rides in a car thinking about someone living far away from these lights and people. Even though our lives are separated by so much I wonder if she imagines the world through eyes like mine.”
― Noriko Nakada, Through Eyes Like Mine

“Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.”
― Helen Keller

“When one door of happiness closes, another opens; but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.”
― Helen Keller

“Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.”
― Robert A. Heinlein

“There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out.”
― Mae West

“You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.”
― Brigham Young

“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”
― John Waters

“True success is figuring out your life and career so you never have to be around jerks.”
― John Waters, Role Models

“I come from a long line of miserable people.”
― Arlene Schindler

“If you are depressed you are living in the past.
If you are anxious you are living in the future.
If you are at peace you are living in the present.”
― Lao Tzu

“We all have the potential to fall in love a thousand times in our lifetime. It's easy. The first girl I ever loved was someone I knew in sixth grade. Her name was Missy; we talked about horses. The last girl I love will be someone I haven't even met yet, probably. They all count. But there are certain people you love who do something else; they define how you classify what love is supposed to feel like. These are the most important people in your life, and you’ll meet maybe four or five of these people over the span of 80 years. But there’s still one more tier to all this; there is always one person you love who becomes that definition. It usually happens retrospectively, but it happens eventually. This is the person who unknowingly sets the template for what you will always love about other people, even if some of these loveable qualities are self-destructive and unreasonable. The person who defines your understanding of love is not inherently different than anyone else, and they’re often just the person you happen to meet the first time you really, really, want to love someone. But that person still wins. They win, and you lose. Because for the rest of your life, they will control how you feel about everyone else.”
― Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live: 85% of a True Story

“To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds.”
― William F. Buckley

“By the time I left college, I realized I'd never be happy unless I undid a lifetime of conformist conditioning.

Thus, I reversed my directives. I shunned affirmation and craved contempt. I sought arguments from argumentative people. I encouraged judgement from judgmental people. I went out of my way to trigger all kinds of scorn from anyone who was willing to give it, and there was never a shortage of volunteers. It wasn't the easiest phase of my life. In fact, there were dozens of nights I cried myself to sleep. But like the most determined of body builders, I stuck to my regimen and eventually began to see results. Eventually, I became a human fortress, impervious to even the most subtle and penetrating forms of disdain. At long last, my mind became a peaceful, self-sufficient entity. Life got easier from there.”
― Daniel Price, Slick